Time to get serious : daily devotions to keep you close to God

354 Pages·1995·1.214 MB·English

by  Tony Evans

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SERIOUS

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TONY EVANS

CROSSWAY B OOKS
WHEATON, ILLINOIS
Time to Get Serious
Copyright ©1995 by Tony Evans
Published by Crossway Books
apublishing ministry of Good News Publishers
1300 Crescent Street
Wheaton, Illinois 60187
and Renaissance Productions
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced,
stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form by any
means, electronic, mechanical, photocopy, recording or otherwise,
without the prior permission of the publisher, except as provided by
USA copyright law.
Art Direction: Josh Dennis
Cover design: Chris Tobias
First printing, 1995
First printing, trade paper edition 2007
Printed in the United States of America
Unless otherwise marked, Scripture quotations are from the
New American Standard Bible,©1960, 1962, 1963,1968,
1971, 1972, 1973, 1975, and 1977 by The Lockman Foundation,
and are used by permission.
Scriptureverses marked KJVaretaken from the King James Version.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Evans, Anthony T.
Time to get serious: daily devotions to keep you close to God
TonyEvans.
p. cm.
1. Devotional calendars. 2. Bible—Meditations. 3. Meditations.
I. Title.
BV4811.E87 1995
242'.2—dc20 95-37964
RRDC 16 15 14 13 12 11 10 09 08 07
15 14 13 12 11 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
Posthumously dedicated
to my good friend and mentor
Tom Skinner
whose brand of serious Christianity
has been a great inspiration
to my own life and ministry.

CONTENTS
Preface 9
With Gratitude 11
1. Knowing God 13
2. Faith: Gotta Have It! 39
3. Marriage & Family: Doing It God’s Way 65
4. Stewardship: Giving Until It Feels Great 91
5. Spiritual Rebounding: Bouncing Back from Life’s Failures 117
6. Learning How to Pray: What Happens When We Seek God 143
7. Transforming Society: Our Role in a Lost World 169
8. Following Jesus: What It Means to Be a Disciple 195
9. Trials & Tribulations:
Getting Out from Under Your Circumstances 221
10. “He Will Be in You”: The Ministry of the Holy Spirit 247
11. Mind & Feet in Gear:
The Importance of Your Thinking & Commitments 273
12. Jesus’ Only Program: “I Will Build My Church” 299
13. It’s His Birthday: Deciding to Worship Jesus at Christmas 325
BLANK
PREFACE
Knowing and serving God is serious business. So serious in fact that
the opportunity to do so cost God the life of His Son. When people
become Christians and pledge themselves to the arduous demands of dis-
cipleship, they soon discover that the Christian life is a battleground and
not a playground. It is a lifetime of challenges, conflicts, and spiritual con-
frontations. It involves victories and defeats (hopefully more of the for-
mer than the latter). It means becoming a special target for the enemy
who makes it his business to zero in on those who would prioritize the
kingdom of God.
To far too many the Christian life is like a trip to Disneyland—all fun,
games, thrill rides, and cartoon characters. However,it is only when they
leave the theme park that they enter the real world of sickness, death,
poverty, divorce, debt, and crime. Because many Christians have suc-
cessfully separated faith and life, they are often unprepared to deal with
the real nitty-gritty matters of life our faith was designed to enable us to
handle.
To prepare ourselves to address these matters victoriously can be a dif-
ficult and sometimes discouraging task. It involves the development of
the daily discipline of the heart and mind that will equip us to face the
ever-present challenges that continuously confront us. Preparing for
life’s challenges demands the regular refocusing of our priorities, dreams,
desires, goals, and plans so that they are being brought in line with God’s
agenda. It involves counteracting the subtle and not-so-subtle attempts
by the enemy to get us to think and operate independently of God.
This work was written to assist you in your pursuit of God and His will
for your life. It is a call for serious Christians to set aside time, on a daily
basis, to direct their hearts and minds to many of the important faith chal-
lenges and issues that await us each day.
You will find a reading for each weekday of the year and a special time